Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style presents some of the fruits of a major international conference that took place at Maynooth University in 2011 entitled ‘Thanatos as Muse? Schubert and Concepts of Late Style’.Footnote ¹ Comprising 20 essays developed from the original conference papers, the volume exhibits a discerning exegesis of the works Schubert composed in the last six years of his life (1822–28). Apparent at all levels of the book is a sense of the authors’ committed quest to challenge received ideas about the nature of ‘lateness’ in Schubert’s oeuvre and to situate his music within its cultural-historical context. The results have potential to initiate an influential conceptual shift in Schubert studies.

In the introduction, which appropriately maps out the topical and methodological parameters of the book, Lorraine Byrne Bodley notes that the project’s aims include on the one hand ‘apostrophizing the issues to which Schubert’s late works give rise’, and on the other ‘capturing the interdisciplinary diversity of contemporary musical thought, as seen through a late-Schubertian lens’ (p. 11). These scholarly premises are pursued with sustained integrity of purpose across the book’s four sections. Among the critical approaches exemplified in the individual essays are considerations of the reception history of Schubert’s music (as portrayed in editions, film and performance culture); analytical accounts of Schubertian tonal and structural language; and hermeneutic reflections on the aesthetic worlds of individual pieces. The collection is produced to a high standard and furnished with a generous provision of analytical diagrams and music examples, plus a select bibliography, all of which help the reader to become immersed in the intricacies of Schubert’s late music.

In response to the spirit of intellectual enquiry cultivated throughout the volume, the reflections that follow are intended to serve as a ‘taster’ of the main arguments presented in each essay; the full implications of this important publication naturally will resonate beyond what can be conveyed here.

Part I, ‘Reception Histories’, consists of four contributions on topics ranging from responses to Schubert’s music in his own lifetime to reconfigurations of his work in twentieth-century film. In the first essay, John Gingerich explores the circumstances surrounding Schubert’s inclusion of instrumental genres in his ‘public profile’ in the early part of 1824. He argues that with such pieces as the A minor Quartet (D. 804), premiered soon after its completion in Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s concert series, Schubert was aiming to establish himself as a composer of large-scale instrumental genres that were ‘synonymous with Beethoven’s name and fame’ (p. 31). That Schubert’s ‘Beethoven project’ was not widely embraced in the musical scene of 1820s Vienna stemmed, according to Gingerich, not only from his prevailing reputation as a lied composer but also from his lack of sustained connections with the aristocracy and professional musicians.Footnote ²

Complementing Gingerich’s approach, Scott Burnham explores the contrasting representations of ‘materialism’ in Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Schubert’s G major Quartet, D. 887, both composed in 1826. Burnham argues that these works display in unique ways ‘a new opacity of the musical surface, one that commands the attention in a different way, inviting us not so much to listen through it into the future but to listen to it’ (p. 41).Footnote ³ In D. 887, materialist gestures take the form of ‘shivering textures’ and ‘sudden, even surreal [tonal] changes’ (pp. 41–2), while in Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge attention is drawn to the musical surface through the use of ‘disembodied trills’ and ‘cinematic disjunctions’ (pp. 46–7). Burnham’s chapter offers a nuanced comparative reading of the projections of subjectivity in these works and provides important foundations for further work on ‘materialism’ in nineteenth-century instrumental music.

Turning to twentieth-century reception of Schubert’s music, Anne Hyland examines Harold Bauer’s two editions (published in 1918 and 1942) of the B-flat Piano Sonata, D. 960, apropos the work’s performance culture and in relation to critical views of the composer’s approach to formal construction. For Hyland, these editions are seminal documents that are both ‘influenced by’ and ‘constitutive of’ the reception history surrounding Schubert’s ‘heavenly lengths’ (p. 56); they represent an attempt to make his music more compact, downplaying ‘the role of repetition’ found in the original paratactic arrangement (p. 65), and thus perpetuating a pejorative attitude towards the composer’s expansive treatment of form and syntax. Hyland concludes by acknowledging the ‘pressing need to adopt an historicist approach to the analysis of Schubert’s music, in order to recognize the impact of reception history on our ways of thinking about, performing, and editing his music’ (p. 75). Her contribution to this volume certainly highlights the consequential implications of such an undertaking.

Part I closes with Harry White’s enquiry into the representation of the G major Quartet, D. 887, in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Considering the new layers of semantic meaning the music acquires in this filmic context, White notes that its opening thematic material not only becomes part of a scenic world depicting violent crime but also serves more broadly as an emblem of European culture within an American setting. White’s chapter brings to light a significant instance of cultural appropriation in the ‘afterlife’ of D. 887, demonstrating the film’s impact on generating new perceptions of the piece and making a convincing case for engaging with cinematic renditions of nineteenth-century music as a mode of reception history.

Part II, ‘The Late Instrumental Music (1): Hermeneutics and Performance’, includes five essays addressing the unique expressive features of Schubert’s compositional language. Robert Hatten examines the topical universe and acoustic properties of the late solo piano and chamber works.Footnote ⁴ He identifies effects ranging from the ‘fusion, or troping, of a waltz over a pastoral pedal point’ in the second theme of D. 894-i (p. 94), through ‘transcendent and tragic shifts’ in D. 804-iii (p. 99), to intimations of death in the second theme of D. 887-i (see pp. 103–9). Such examples underline Hatten’s view that Schubert’s late music turns away from ‘traditional communicative signs to more ineffable symbols of interiority’: ‘it is through these highly configured musical passages’, he argues, ‘that Schubert’s late style touches us most directly and deeply – even as we struggle to explain just how’ (p. 110). Hatten’s chapter offers an incisive response to the challenge; his intimate connection with the expressive language of late Schubert is evident at every stage of the analytical commentary.

With reference to Adorno’s 1928 essay on Schubert and Edward Said’s On Late Style,Footnote ⁵ Richard Kramer explores the nature of lyricism and lateness in the G major Piano Sonata, D. 894. Although the piece initially inhabits an idyllic realm, projecting an aura of lyrical wholeness in its opening bars, such an impression is called into question (as is so often the case in late Schubert) by events that materialize as the music unfolds – moments that go ‘against the grain’ (to borrow a phrase from the title of Kramer’s chapter) and hint at darker undercurrents beneath the seemingly tranquil surface. Alert to such ‘tears in the fabric of the story’ (p. 115), Kramer attends closely to the material in bars 10–16 of the first movement where, in his view, the music recedes into ‘whispered, ghostly silence’ (p. 116). He interprets the effect of this passage (and the piece more broadly) through the lens of Schubert’s ‘Schwestergruß’, D. 762, exploring the ways in which these works might be said to ‘speak to one another’ through their use of similar expressive tropes and musical figures (p. 129). In doing so, Kramer constructs a compelling model for decoding the ‘poetics’ of Schubert’s instrumental style.

Eric Wen offers a detailed analytical account of the Andante sostenuto (in C-sharp minor) of the Piano Sonata in B-flat, D. 960, reflecting on the ‘emotional effect’ of its tonal structure and poignant chromatic inflections (p. 135). He identifies an expressive narrative that gradually overcomes the ‘bleak and despondent’ tone of the opening section (p. 135), firstly in the form of ‘short-lived respites’ in E major and C major, subsequently reaching a state of ‘reconciliation’ as the movement draws to a close, conveyed through the emergence of the tonic major (p. 148). Viewing the ‘incandescent metamorphosis’ into C-sharp major as ‘a tonal metaphor of acceptance’, Wen concludes that ‘at the end of this sorrowful Wiegenlied – this final lullaby before death – Schubert has at last found peace’ (p. 148). Given that biographical factors do not receive sustained attention throughout the analysis, Wen’s concluding statement appears to lack sufficient contextualization: reference to James Sobaskie’s interpretation of this movement as ‘Schubert’s self-elegy’ might have been usefully included in order to situate Wen’s contribution within a broader critical framework.Footnote ⁶

Continuing the discussion of Schubert’s 1828 piano music, Marjorie Hirsch offers a contextual reading of the extremely strange Andantino from the A major Sonata, D. 959. She argues that the movement displays within its ternary framework a dramatic confrontation between a lyrical theme (projecting classical traits) and a gothic fantasy,Footnote ⁷ followed by ‘reconciliation’ in the final section. Though the violent outburst does gradually subside, Hirsch’s suggestion that the movement culminates with expressive resolution can be problematized on account of the main theme’s distorted identity when it resurfaces in the aftermath of the fantastical rupture. The additional layer above the melodic line (initially in the form of quivering repeated notes) and newly configured accompanimental pattern leave ghostly imprints on the musical surface, the damaging repercussions of previous events seeming to lurk in the shadows of the lyrical material. This haunted thematic return implies not so much a conciliatory phase but rather a state of blurred boundaries, conjuring an image of a disturbed subject unable to sustain its individual voice.Footnote ⁸

If Hirsch’s observations about the presence of reconciliation in D. 959-ii remain open to debate, there is much of value in her commentary on the oft-discussed central section.Footnote ⁹ She situates its topical idiom in a constellation of aesthetic impulses, tracing parallels with the vocabulary of Schubert’s Schauerballaden and more broadly with the gothic work of such figures as Fuseli, Goya, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Ludwig Tieck. Hirsch’s chapter establishes an important new stage in the critical discourse on Schubertian violence; one could imagine the framework being applied to disturbing moments found elsewhere in Schubert’s oeuvre, particularly the slow movements of the G major Quartet, D. 887, and C major Quintet, D. 956.

In the last essay of Part II, Julian Horton discusses the analytical and performative implications of the first movement of the A major Sonata, D. 959, presenting a complementary approach to that of the previous essay. With reference to the work of William Caplin and Janet Schmalfeldt, Horton proposes a balanced reading of the movement’s structural synthesis of the lyrical and dynamic, the episodic and developmental. He views these traits as part of a dialogic network (rather than as representing mutually exclusive ends of the structural spectrum) where a ‘processual’ treatment of thematic material can be detected (and projected to varying degrees in performance) across the main sections of the movement’s sonata-form trajectory. His analysis offers a welcome alternative to the ‘anti-dynamic view’ of Schubert’s instrumental style (p. 189).

Part III, ‘The Late Instrumental Music (2): Meaning and Genre’, opens with Glenn Stanley’s account of the ‘Unfinished’ Symphony, D. 759. His central argument is that traces of ‘death’ suffuse the first movement’s topical and structural fabric, notably in the development section, where he identifies allusions to the second-act finale of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, a scene in which the death of the Don is staged, and a stylistic idiom that recalls the ombra topic (see especially pp. 205–8), the lingua franca of operatic supernaturalism. After addressing the musical dramaturgy of D. 759, highlighting its fusion of operatic and symphonic flavours, Stanley reflects on the subjectivity implied through the work’s intimations of death, widening his focal point in the second half of the essay to consider broader cultural concerns.

Lauri Suurpää’s chapter continues the exploration of Schubert’s symphonic style through a detailed reading of the relationship between form and expression in the slow movement of the ‘Great’ C major Symphony, D. 944. Combining structural analysis with a topical approach, Suurpää argues that the movement presents a narrative of Romantic longing, one that is based on the topical opposition between march (with funereal associations) and pastoral; the latter, he notes, appears to be ephemeral, ultimately rendered ‘an unobtainable illusion’ within the overarching ‘tragic’ trajectory (p. 235). Indeed, the chapters of Suurpää and Stanley constitute substantial contributions on a genre that has received less hermeneutic attention than Schubert’s chamber works or piano music and is thus ripe for further exploration.

Ryan McClelland investigates another generally underrepresented area in the literature: scherzo-type movements. Examining textural, dynamic and hypermetric features, he argues that the slow movement (rather than the first) in Schubert’s late instrumental works often serves as a lens through which to contextualize ‘tonal anomalies’ found in the ensuing dance movement. McClelland interrogates this claim across a judicious selection of examples drawn from the String Quintet, D. 956, the C minor Piano Sonata, D. 958, and the Piano Trio in E-flat, D. 929, illuminating the multifaceted nature of tonal recollection and interrelationships in the composer’s music. The expressive implications of such connections might have been pursued further in the case of D. 956, where deeply disturbing events from the slow movement surface again in the following movements.

Large-scale modulatory schemes are discussed also in Xavier Hascher’s contribution, evocatively entitled ‘Detours, Wrong Tracks and Dead Ends: The Wanderer in the Labyrinth of Schubert’s Late Instrumental Music’. Hascher explores with analytical precision the compositional means through which Schubert broadened the boundaries of ‘classical form’, focusing closely on the treatment of thematic material in the Quintet’s first movement, D. 956. His analysis probes beneath the surface of the music to uncover calculated tonal ‘digressions’, formal multiplicity and temporal non-linearity. Particularly revealing is Hascher’s suggestion that the second theme is ‘a paradox, a form of impossibility. It is at once tangible and insubstantial; it hovers in and out of reality, as if gliding through a perspectival space between dreaming and waking’ (p. 278). With this characterization Hascher captures the essence not just of the secondary material in D. 956-i but also of Schubert’s lyrical themes more generally.

Part III closes with Su Yin Mak’s chapter on the F minor Piano Duet Fantasy, D. 940, a work that presents a collection of late Schubertian traits, ranging from formal hybridity, through tonal interrelationships, to transient lyricism. Setting the scene for her enquiry, Mak begins by tracing the development of the fantasia genre throughout the long eighteenth century, examining in particular interactions of fantasy and sonata principles in the music of C.P.E. Bach, Beethoven and Hummel.Footnote ¹⁰ Against this backdrop, she argues that Schubert’s D. 940 represents a new conceptual approach to the fantasia genre, suggested through the absence of explicitly improvisatory gestures (a defining feature of eighteenth-century fantasias) and from its fusion of numerous formal procedures, incorporating variation techniques, parataxis and elements of song form within an overarching sonata cycle. In general, Mak’s commentary on the aesthetic impact of the stylistic conflicts that permeate the piece might have benefitted from greater nuance. With regard to the final bars of the work, Mak endorses William Kinderman’s view that D. 940 embodies a ‘tragic’ disposition, projecting ‘a sense of progress towards an inescapable destiny’ (p. 304), but she does not develop the point further and thus neglects the opportunity to invest this familiar theme with new insights.Footnote ¹¹

In Part IV, ‘Defining Late Style’, Benjamin Korstvedt’s essay offers a further foray into the realms of instrumental music. What is unique about Korstvedt’s contribution, setting it apart from the majority of essays in the volume, is the way he reads the aesthetic qualities of Schubert’s late style in the light of the socio-cultural climate of 1820s Vienna. He argues that the composer’s final works represent a ‘new, distinctly modern consciousness’ (p. 412); they eschew expressive synthesis, creating the ‘impression of disjunction, of disruptive contrasts of all sorts – whether visionary, consoling, tragic, uncanny or occasionally even bathetic’ (p. 424). Such a view is especially pertinent apropos the F minor Fantasy, D. 940, and Quintet, D. 956, whose endings portray resistance to closure: the possibility of complete rapprochement is negated and an image of unresolved conflict prevails.

A similar sense of expressive disjunction can be detected in the late vocal music, an area that forms the focal point of the volume’s fourth section. In an interpretation that moves smoothly between musical analysis and cultural criticism, Susan Youens (the dedicatee of the volume) relocates Schubert’s setting of ‘Der Einsame’, D. 800, from its peripheral position in recent reception history to a more central place in the discourse on Schubertian song. Youens elucidates this lied with a discerning eye for detail, reading the composer’s response to Lappe’s poetic text within the context of contemporaneous philosophical reflections on Einsamkeit. Notions of solitude are also considered in Lorraine Byrne Bodley’s essay on Schubert’s Harper settings (composed in 1816 and revised in 1822). She offers a perceptive reading of Schubert’s preoccupation with the ‘wanderer theme’ (and its varying levels of intensity) in his late songs, comparing his treatment of the trope in the Harper cycle, D. 478, with that of Winterreise, D. 911. In a refreshing interpretative move, Byrne Bodley, while acknowledging the biographical implications of Schubert’s depiction of solitary wanderer figures, cautions against a straightforward correlation between his music and personal circumstances: ‘Schubert is not identical to the lyrical ich in either cycle. Both Wanderers are Rollenfiguren, a medium through which the artist speaks’ (p. 355). In other words, the wanderers function as allegorical agents in the song cycles, belonging to an aesthetic realm that is dissociated from reality, their multi-dimensional identities ultimately defying easy characterization.

Offering fresh perspectives on familiar territory, Jürgen Thym approaches late style through a reflection on ‘the invocation of memory’ in ‘Gute Nacht’ and ‘Der Lindenbaum’ from Winterreise, D. 911, together with ‘Die Stadt’ and ‘Der Doppelgänger’ from Schwanengesang, D. 957.Footnote ¹² His analysis establishes convincing musical-poetic grounds on which to view these songs as being shaped by a shared expressive scenario that involves disturbing shifts between memories of a ‘traumatic event’ and deceptive depictions of a ‘utopian past’ (p. 403). In a similar mode of comparative examination, Blake Howe examines the embodiment of lateness in three part-songs, ‘Widerspruch’ (D. 865), ‘Nachthelle’ (D. 892) and ‘Grab und Mond’ (D. 893), exploring their shared ‘meditations on the finite and infinite’ and reflecting on the corporeal implications of their expressive plots (p. 360). If, to use Howe’s words, ‘Nachthelle’ depicts ‘luminous transcendence’ at its close, the situation in ‘Grab und Mond’ appears less liberating, where ‘death seems to be a barrier that is never broken: life’s boundaries are affirmed, its container never breached’ (p. 382). The poignant fusion of hope and despair, life and death, evoked in these songs reflects the mode of expressive ambivalence that is fundamental to Schubert’s final works.

In the volume’s final essay, Laura Tunbridge shifts the frame of reference away from defining late style exclusively in terms of musical-stylistic features to one that takes into consideration the role of performance practice in generating perceptions of lateness. Examining the afterlife of ‘Ständchen’ from Schwanengesang, as portrayed on recordings and film, Tunbridge argues that the song can be seen to have acquired an aura of lateness not purely from intrinsic aspects of its compositional design but rather through changes in performative approaches to Schubert’s lieder during the twentieth century.

What emerges across the book is a vivid portrait of the late Schubertian landscape, illuminated with clarity of vision through a remarkably wide-ranging critical lens. Resisting straightforward consensus as to whether the final works embody reconciliation or a lack thereof, the volume appropriately captures the complexities of Schubert’s late style and bears testament to the way in which his music continually invites contrasting scholarly responses. While opportunities for further cross-referencing among the chapters occasionally might have been missed, particularly in instances where individual pieces or conceptual issues are explored from a range of perspectives, this small quibble does not detract from the book’s overarching narrative cohesion.

Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style is a significant contribution to the discipline, notably expanding the hermeneutic purview of Schubert scholarship and projecting salient implications for nineteenth-century studies more broadly. Lorraine Byrne Bodley and Julian Horton are to be congratulated on assembling this robust, meticulously edited collection of essays that will remain a source of authority on Schubert’s late style for years to come.